President's Accuser Stays Out Of Sight

April 02, 1998|By Vincent J. Schodolski, Tribune Staff Writer.

LONG BEACH, Calif. — When the word came, Paula Corbin Jones was inside her condominium as a spring storm drenched Southern California with heavy rain. While the sun emerged from time to time, Jones did not.

Nearly four years after filing her sexual-harassment lawsuit against President Clinton, Jones had no public comment on U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright's decision Wednesday to throw the suit out of court. She left the talking to her longtime spokeswoman, Susan Carpenter-McMillan.

"We are extremely disappointed," said Carpenter-McMillan as she arrived at Jones' apartment shortly after the decision was announced. "I think Judge Wright has made a wrong decision. This is not the first time she has made a wrong decision in this case. We will more than likely be before the Supreme Court again.

"The one who has paid dearly for all of this is a great heroic woman, Paula Corbin Jones."

Emerging later after a brief meeting with Jones, Carpenter-McMillan said the former Arkansas state employee had met her as she entered the apartment saying, "Have you heard?"

"This was never about (special prosecutor) Kenneth Starr, or about a political agenda, or money or books," Carpenter-McMillan said. "She wanted her name back. She has paid a tremendous price for the women of this country."

She said she expected Jones' lawyers to appeal Wednesday's ruling.

Jones resides in this beachside community just south of Los Angeles with her husband, Steven, an airline ticket clerk and aspiring actor, but her roots go deep in rural Arkansas.

Jones grew up in the tiny town of Lonoke, 30 miles east of Little Rock, in a home where church, the Bible and self-reliance ruled.

Jones and her two sisters wore clothes their mother made from scraps of cloth their father brought home from his job at a local sewing factory. While there was no television, there were daily Bible lessons and church three times a week.

She and her sisters have said that the only break they got from this simple routine was when their father would spring for tickets for a local rodeo.

While one of her sisters was schooled at home from the 8th grade and the other dropped out before finishing high school, Jones appeared determined to get a higher degree.

When it turned out that she lacked sufficient credits to graduate from Lonoke High School, she transferred to nearby Carlisle High School, which required fewer credits.

After drifting through a series of clerical jobs after high school, Jones landed a $12,000-a-year job with the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission.

After just a few months, she was asked to help at an annual management conference held at the Excelsior Hotel in downtown Little Rock. It was at that 1991 meeting that Jones claims then-Gov. Bill Clinton made a sexual advance.

After the meeting, Jones has said, a state trooper, Danny Ferguson, told her the governor wanted to meet with her in a hotel suite. There, Jones has said, Clinton exposed himself and propositioned her for a sexual act.

Although she told friends and family members her story, she said nothing publicly for more than two years until an article about the alleged encounter appeared in the American Spectator magazine.

Initially saying she only wanted a retraction by the magazine and possibly an apology from Clinton, she later acted on a friend's advice and filed her harassment suit seeking $700,000 in damages.

Her team of lawyers, headed by Donovan Campbell and bankrolled by the conservative John W. Whitehead's Rutherford Institute, extensively investigated Clinton's sexual past in an effort to challenge his credibility when he denied Jones's allegations.

Clinton's lawyers were once close to a settlement with Jones that would have awarded her a reported settlement of $700,000, but Jones refused the deal.

She fired the lawyers then representing her and pressed on with the suit that was dismissed Wednesday.